Preface

Having been teaching sports science at university level (training sports experts) for several years and studying the psychological issues of the functioning of sports teams and sports clubs, the topic I am most interested in, I can consider myself lucky. Furthermore, I also belong to the lucky few (sports teams these days have an urgent need for the help of TEAMs composed of experts in various fields such as nutrition, sports science, and sport psychology) who have the chance to work with professional sports teams; I am employed as a sport psychologist and organisational consultants by a national but also internationally recognised handball team in order to enhance the performance of the club and the team. And above all, as the icing on the cake, I am able to give direct examples from professional sport in the form of case studies when teaching my university students besides providing them with ample theoretical knowledge, just as it is required from a professor in a country with deep university culture. However, knowing how certain Hungarian sports organisations work, these are not always positive examples, but it is instructive to see them anyway. During the past years, I have had the opportunity to study our leading national sports organisations in many different ways. These organisations differ largely on the basis of their sports scientific background.

Top-ranking sports teams make attempts to exploit the results of sports science research, especially those of natural scientific nature such as biomedicine. Sport psychology, a branch of social sciences, is also gaining relevance; however, experts need to fight valiantly in order to promote their results despite all the success, ranking in the Olympics, or gold medals won at World Championships. The excellent psychologists working in the aforementioned field might have had difficulties at the start several years ago – I also experienced the same as a handball coach – in winning the trust and attention of coaches and club leaders/managers. Hopefully, this situation is about to change soon.

With the advancement of science, the scope of international research in sports science is growing, and the application of results is also improving a lot. The present work provides an insight into the questions of two moderately fresh fields of science, and specific practical examples are given from the field of professional sport in order to illustrate the theoretical background.

This book is based on my doctoral dissertation and the articles published and conference presentations given since the publication thereof. The aforementioned sources constitute the theoretical framework and the conceptual basis of the present work. Furthermore, working with top leading athletes recognised at national and international level and sports leaders has enabled me to experience several situations which are suitable for illustrating the theories I have relied on. It is needless to say that theory and practice do not always match, but that is what makes the whole job absolutely exciting.

I hope that the book is of interest to researchers of sports science: sport psychologists, sports managers, those dealing with organisational and leadership theories, and, most of all, to students of sports science. Moreover, I would also highly recommend this work to sports leaders (club leaders, club owners, managers) having practical knowledge. It may make their tasks easier when assessing certain situations and their options, and they may find it less difficult to arrive at better decisions. Last but not least, those might also be interested in reading the present work who simply love sport and read about it every day but have never grabbed any book that would answer their questions related to the topic in a scientific and exact way.[1]